GROUP DECRIES SPONSORED ATTACK, SLAMS SON’s CEMENT POLICY

AAM President, Omife.I.Omife (2^nd Right), Nnorom Charles, Legal Consultant (2^nd left), Celestine Achi, PR Consultant (extreme right) and Odion Alebor (Extreme left).

A human rights organization Alliance Against Monopoly (AAM) has decried what it termed the spate of orchestrated onslaught on its image and integrity.  These attacks, which have escalated in the past few days, the organization claimed, are intended to misrepresent it and impose on it phantom officers and activities that are alien to it.

Speaking at a press conference held in Lagos, the President of Alliance Against Monopoly Mazi Omife I. Omife specifically referred to stories in some newspapers one of which was on page eleven of The Guardian of Friday September 11, 2015 captioned "SON Under Fire Over Policies". Omife opined that “these apparently sponsored stories were conceived to hoodwink and mislead the unsuspecting public.” He stated that, contrary to erroneous impression created, AAM did not at any time, in the recent past, indicate that it would hold demonstration in any part of the country.

Omife categorically denied that a certain Mr. Mohammed Aliu Usman as reported in the said story in The Guardian of Friday 18, 2015 was a member of AAM or its Publicity Secretary. He alleged that those who created the non-existent Mr. Mohammed Aliu Usman were the same people who have consistently spinned the lie that AAM was either fronting for a multinational in the construction industry. To him; nothing could be further from the truth as ‘’his association is non partisan and wholly independent. Our goal, he stressed, is and remains the public good.’’

 Omife restated that members of AAM would remain committed to their constitutional duties to seek the welfare of fellow citizens òf Nigeria and shall continue to denounce the cement standardization and pigmentation policy of the Standard Organization of Nigeria as illegal, anti-people and calculated to send Nigerians to avoidable economic servitude.

AAM, Omife assured, will continue to support every well meaning move by those in authority to entrench best practices in the construction industry as long as this move was transparent. He lamented that the raging crisis in the cement industry was needlessly ignited by the Standards Organization of Nigeria. AAM, he emphasized, would continue to resist all overt and covert attempts to enthrone monopoly in the cement sector. Omife therefore enjoined the Buhari government to, as a matter of urgency, call the Standards Organization of Nigeria to order so as to forestall its avidity to pursuing enlightened self-interest in the guise of public good.